Back to basics on Fluther operations?

Answer to your heart’s content. :) There’s no limit. I myself have answered pretty old questions, because I felt that I had something to contribute. If that’s the case for you, definitely don’t hold back.

Sometimes you’ll search a topic and find something of interest, or randomly read the answers to a subject and contribute to it. It doesn’t matter when it was posted, you might actually re-jump start the question again, especially if you strike a chord with its author (who is probably following it).

Once you have more jellies in your fluther, you will begin to receive questions as they are asked: then they will be new and topical (depends on the subject).

Til then, answer to subjects that you are interested in; then fluther will know what questions to send to your inbox.

Welcome.

Being new myself I wondered the same thing.

I came to the conclusion that somebody on here may search, as I have done, for a particular subject which brings back older results. If I think I can add to the useful information in the original answers then I’ll post, as it may be relevant to the person searching.

AC

The time-stamp issue has been hotly debated over time and seems to be a sensitive one. Not long ago a compromise was effected: if you pause your cursor over the paragraph marker at the end of a response, you can see when it was posted. Check the last response; that will tell you how long the question has been inactive.

Sometimes questions do revive after a lapse of time. There is no expiration date. I wouldn’t bother now to answer a question about who I’m going to vote for in last year’s election, but others are timeless or seasonal and can still attract answers. Feel free to respond. The worst that can happen is that no one ever notices your comment.

I think the “Siblings” list on the right can play a part in reawakening an old thread.

As long as someone is following a given question, that person will be notified when new answers are posted. I can tell you that I have sometimes received a GA minutes after posting to a question that’s a year old.

[mod says] Discussions are very rarely closed, so by all means answer away!

And remember that a lot of people find the site with Google. So the person that asked might not be around anymore but you could help someone in the future with the same question.

Are you all on Pacific Time? Or, are you like me, up at all hours of the night? I was just checking my e-mail before signing off for the day and realized that several responses were already posted. Thank you everyone.

@Jeruba Thank you for that bit of info regarding pausing the curser over the paragraph marker; I am fairly sure that I would not have noticed that on my own.

Another question, this one regarding Great Answer!, if the answer is usefull and answers the question but is not especially great, should Great Answer! be clicked?

@Rozee I’m on Eastern Time… it’s 3:13AM where I am. We have members all over the United States, and in several other countries, too.

As far as clicking “Great Answer” or “Great Question” goes, it’s completely up to you. People give lurve for lots of different reasons. Some of those reasons might be: it answers your question, was well thought out and/or well written, makes you think, or just because it makes you laugh. Enjoy!

@Rozee Great Answers is lurve, and lurve, like smiles, is free. Lurve, like a smile, might buy you a cup of coffee if you’ve also got a fiver in your pocket, but what better way to show you appreciate all the other Jellies on here.

Welcome to Fluther, and have some nice lurve to go with your coffee! }:^)

I wish there was a way to “undo” Great Answer. More than once(but not very often) I’ve accidentally clicked on it in various ways for things that I might not have done so for if I didn’t do something screwy. I wouldn’t want to be able to take it back for more than a couple of minutes… Maybe the same deal as editing answers. :P

An addendum to @Jeruba‘s response. You won’t be able to see the paragraph sign (permalink) until you hover the mouse over the general area that it’s in. When you see it, it will be orange surrounded by white, and when you hover, the colors will invert. Then you should see the date or time that the post was created (in parenthesis).

There is a date at the top of each question though. Typically I don’t answer questions that are more than three months old, but some people do. Feel free.